The grandiose Ewing House in Lancaster is perched atop a commanding hill. The more modest
Sherman House sits farther down the slope.

That placement seems ironic, considering that the amazingly accomplished Ewing family has lived
in William T. Sherman’s shadow for almost 150 years.

Thomas Ewing, the family patriarch, was a self-made man, rising from lowly laborer to successful
lawyer and two-time senator who served and advised several presidents.

As if that weren’t enough, three of Ewing’s four sons became generals in the Civil War.

And Ewing was something of a foster father to Sherman, taking him in when Sherman’s father died,
and helping him get into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Given that, one might think that the Ewing family would be revered in Lancaster. But, late in
1864, a singular event helped flip the script.

“The March to the Sea was so dramatic,” said Kenneth Heineman, a former Lancaster resident and
author of
Civil War Dynasty: The Ewing Family of Ohio, published late last month.

Indeed, once Sherman led Union troops on the march through Georgia and the Carolinas, the
general cemented his rock-star legacy.

“Thomas Ewing is regarded as our accomplished politician and a very successful man,” said
Phyllis Kuhn, historian for the Sherman House Museum. “But Sherman was our hero.”

Also, while Sherman’s boyhood home is a museum, the Ewing house is privately owned (not by
descendants). This, too, might serve to dampen the Ewing story.

Heineman’s book, then, shines some light into a darkened corner of central Ohio history.

The son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Ewing was a “salt boiler” in what later became West
Virginia. After settling in frontier Ohio, and while still working in the salt mines, he became the
first graduate of Ohio University in 1815.

His law practice thrived, and he became involved in politics, serving as secretary of the
treasury under William Henry Harrison and John Tyler and later as the first-ever secretary of the
interior under Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.

Heineman paints an effective portrait of a determined and well-rounded man. Ewing’s mental
discipline was such that when he decided that learning Spanish would help his business, he
sequestered himself in his study and became fluent in six weeks.

Meanwhile, Ewing took in Sherman — who later married Ewing’s daughter Ellen — while raising his
own large family.

Sons Hugh, Tom Jr. and Charley all served in the Union Army and rose to become generals, leading
battles from Kansas to Maryland and Mississippi.

“They were the Forrest Gumps of the Civil War,” said Heineman, referring to their ubiquitous
presence.

Heineman, a professor at Ohio University-Lancaster for 18 years, became chairman of the History
Department at Angelo State in San Angelo, Texas, in 2009.

He thinks that factors besides Sherman’s march led to the Ewings’ diminished profile.

Thomas Ewing was a moderate who didn’t care for Abraham Lincoln. And although several of his
sons had different views, Thomas was not an abolitionist.

Considering that for much of the 19th century, Ohio had restrictive “black laws” that denied
full citizenship to African-Americans, Ewing was hardly out of step with his contemporaries.

Still, it is disturbing to read his thoughts in early 1861 about what might happen if slavery
were abolished: “I do not want the Negroes distributed through the North. We have got enough of
them now.”

In some respects, Heineman said, the Ewings “politically were on the wrong side of history.”

Prior to starting this book, Heineman’s specialty was politics, and that is evident in parts of
Civil War Dynasty. At times, an otherwise-interesting narrative gets bogged down in the
minutiae of legislative wrangling and political maneuvering.

But, for the most part, the book helps fill what has been a significant gap in central Ohio
history.

“If you read all the Sherman biographies, it was always just ‘His father-in-law, Thomas Ewing,
was politically important,’ ” Heineman said. “As I got into it (the research), I thought, ‘Oh, boy,
there’s a lot more here than just that.’ ”